QuickBooks Brand Strategy

Evaluating QuickBooks’ visual brand strategy, including first-time explorations into Gen Z’s perception of the QuickBooks brand.

QuickBooks Brand Strategy

Goal: Evaluate the perception and effectiveness of QuickBooks (QB) brand elements, with a focus on illustrations.

Why: The QuickBooks visual brand elements was due for a refresh, and there had not been any evaluation of the existing brand elements since its launch.

Results: Delivered actionable insights on QB brand perception that set the direction of the visual refresh. Delivered insights on Gen Z business owners.

Skills
Evaluative research, survey, dScout, storytelling

Date
February - March 2023

Team
Lead researcher (myself)
2 visual designers
1 content designer

My role

Research Objective

I led and managed this project from end-to-end. My responsibilities included the following:

  • Directed a team of designers in driving the first in-depth research on QB illustrations and overall brand strategy

  • Designed a study to evaluate the effectiveness of the current brand elements

  • Fielded research via diary study/survey

  • Facilitated synthesis sessions with stakeholders to build engagement and partnership

  • Delivered durable insights on impactful brand element usage in product and marketing

We set out to investigate:

  1. How do customers (especially Gen Z) currently perceive the QuickBooks brand?

  2. What value do illustrations provide, and are they even necessary?

Methodology

In order to:

  • Understand gaps in the existing brand strategy and determine where to focus the refresh.

  • Inform whether or not to keep illustrations as a brand element

  • Provide designers with guidelines for effective illustration use in product and marketing

1. Internal audit

I started with an internal audit of illustration use in product and marketing as a starting point to tackling objective #2– What value do illustrations provide, and are they even necessary?

I had the team organize all of the instances of illustrations based on the value propositions that they aimed to deliver.

This way, we could pinpoint and evaluate the effectiveness of illustrations based on their intended purpose.

2. Survey

I then used dScout’s powerful diary study tool to conduct an in-depth unmoderated study. DScout enables data collection in the form of open-ended, survey-style, and video response-style questions.

This way, we were able to gather both qualitative and directionally quantitative data on how customers felt about the QuickBooks brand, (objective #1— How do customers currently perceive the QuickBooks brand?) and evaluate the effectiveness of illustrations in each of the value propositions.

The study had a total of 68 participants, split across customers and prospectives.

To understand current QB brand perception among customers, prospects, and Gen Z (objective 2):

I first asked customers a series of questions around brands they trust and are excited by to get a less biased understanding of how customers perceive brands.

Then I asked questions more specific to finance-related brands, and then questions specific to how they perceive QuickBooks.

I made sure to measure these against brand attributes as well to gather tangible metrics on how QB was measuring up.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the illustration brand elements (objective 1):

I selected a number of key flows from each of the value proposition categories (determined via the audit), then created mockups with and without illustrations to test if their presence made a significant difference.

To account for bias, I split participants in half and split which saw the mockups with vs without illustrations first.

I measured against various brand attributes on a Likert scale to quantify alignment with the intended brand strategy.

Deliverables + Outcomes

Insights on QuickBooks current brand perception

  • Actionable direction on where to focus the next brand refresh to better appeal to customers

  • Direction on how to appeal to the growing Gen Z audience

Specific opportunity areas on how to make our existing brand elements more effective

  • Data-backed principles on how to use illustrations to deliver the most value to customers

"This is the most in-depth, thorough, and data-backed research I've ever seen on illustrations... There's nothing in your insights that isn't applicable to all of Intuit."

- Joe Preston, VP of Product and Design at Intuit